Columbus jury hears lawsuit in fatal family feud over cows in Harris County dove field

A 2019 dispute over cows trampling a dove field led to George Hale “Bick” Bickerstaff III being shot in the head outside his Harris County home, where he had fired a rifle at his sister and her longtime partner.

Her partner, Michael Neely, mortally wounded Bickerstaff during the confrontation over Elizabeth Ann “Beth” Bickerstaff’s cows getting into one of her brother’s dove fields, on land they shared on Hamilton Mulberry Grove Road.

Details of this fatal family feud were recounted this week in federal court in Columbus, where a jury is hearing testimony in a wrongful death suit filed by Bick Bickerstaff’s daughter, Christina Necole Vazquez-Klecha.

The lawsuit filed in 2020 claims Neely and Beth Bickerstaff acted negligently in causing Bick Bickerstaff’s death, and his daughter should recover more than $75,000 as the full value of her father’s life, and any other relief the jury grants.

U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land dismissed claims against the sister in 2021, finding no evidence she anticipated or contributed to her brother’s death.

Neely now is the sole defendant.

What happened?

The jury on Tuesday heard recordings of Neely’s deposition in the lawsuit, and excerpts of a 911 call reporting the shooting.

Neely said the siblings’ arguments over the cows were common, so he thought the spat that erupted the night of July 12, 2019, would be just another round.

The brother and sister had a heated phone call that evening, and then the sister got in her crew-cab pickup with Neely to drive to her brother’s home a quarter-mile away.

Beth Bickerstaff, who testified Tuesday, said she had her brother’s mail, so she was delivering that to him, along with checking on the fence she planned to repair.

She did not bring any tools, she said, because the electric fence line had only to be pulled off the ground to keep the cows out of the dove field.

Neely brought along four guns that he said he kept to defend himself against dangerous animals. He had a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson handgun, a .30-caliber carbine rifle and two .380-caliber Taurus pistols, according to court documents.

The couple found Bick Bickerstaff sitting on a golf cart outside his home. He had a .223 rifle, which he kept “for the purpose of shooting wild dogs or other dangerous wildlife,” along with hunting and target practice, the lawsuit said.

When his sister’s Dodge Ram 2500 pickup came down the driveway, he fired a shot at it, the suit said. His sister testified the bullet kicked up dirt and gravel that hit the side of her truck.

But she kept going, as if she was going to ram the golf cart: “I thought she was going to run over him,” Neely said later.

With Bick Bickerstaff still holding the rifle, Neely got out of the truck’s passenger side and rushed him, pushing the rifle barrel up with one hand as he put his 9-millimeter pistol to Bickerstaff’s head with the other, and pulled the trigger.

He said the brother was pointing the rifle at him, before he pushed it away.

“I just pushed the gun up and shot him,” he said afterward. “That’s all there was to it. Didn’t have no choice.”

That’s what he told a 911 dispatcher, after a witness called and handed him the phone. “The guy just shot at us and I shot him in the head,” he said.

A forensic consultant, Dr. James Downs, testified Bickerstaff was left with a “hard contact gunshot wound” that cut a gash through his left temple and fractured his skull. “He’s not dead, but he’s incapacitated,” the witness said. “He’s not moving.”

Taken to Piedmont Columbus Regional, Bick Bickerstaff died two days later, at 1:03 a.m. Sunday, July 14, 2019. He was 60 years old.

With Neely claiming self-defense, no one was charged in the shooting.

Acting District Attorney Don Kelly, who’s running the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit prosecutor’s office while DA Stacey Jackson’s on medical leave, said no records show that warrants were issued, or that a grand jury reviewed the evidence.

The claim

“As impassioned, angry, and violent aggressors and trespassers, the foregoing negligent, grossly negligent, reckless, wanton, and willful acts of defendants Beth Bickerstaff and Mike Neely together, and each of them independently, directly and proximately resulted in the death of Bick Bickerstaff,” said the lawsuit filed by the daughter’s lead attorney, Teresa Tomlinson of the law firm Hall Booth.

The couple had multiple opportunities to avoid the confrontation, but instead they charged past the rifle shot, as if to ram the golf car with the truck, before Neely shot the brother with a 9-millimeter pistol, the suit said.

Questioning Beth Bickerstaff on the witness stand Tuesday, Tomlinson established that she and Neely had a common law partnership since 1993, though they were not married.

After Neely killed her brother, she inherited some of his investment funds, opening a bank account with $282,000, she said. Neely would inherit that money, if she died, she said.

She admitted being frustrated with her brother and the recurring conflict over the cows, but she did not foresee the ensuing violence, she said.

“If I had known he was going to shoot at me, I would have stayed at home,” she said.

Tomlinson noted that among the mail being delivered was a letter from a farm auctioneer, addressed to both siblings, indicating Bick Bickerstaff was considering selling some property.

Beth Bickerstaff said she had not noticed that, before the shooting.

‘The glaring hole’

In his December 2021 ruling absolving Beth Bickerstaff of blame for her brother’s death, Judge Land rejected the notion she “trespassed” on property she jointly owned.

Her driving aggressively toward her brother after being shot at was not negligent, under the circumstances, he wrote. And the fact that Neely brought guns with him was no evidence he intended to shoot anyone, as he habitually had the weapons with him.

“Quite frankly, even if he did take the guns with him in case he needed them to defend himself against Bick, that fact, which is not supported by any evidence, does not support the conclusion that Elizabeth was somehow negligent by accompanying him,” the judge wrote.

“The glaring hole in plaintiff’s case is the absence of any evidence that Elizabeth had an understanding that Neely intended to use them negligently to shoot Bick. None,” he emphasized.

He added: “Plaintiff has had an opportunity to discover all of the evidence that may exist to support her claim that Elizabeth and Neely acted in concert to bring about Bick’s tragic death. She has come up short. Her concerted conduct claim fails as a matter of law.”

Besides Tomlinson, the attorneys for the daughter include John Sheftall, Alexandra Beato, Mariel Smith, Frank Lumpkin IV and Madelyn Boren.

Representing Neely are Nathan Lee and Michael Hill of the Newnan firm Glover & Davis.